ALBANY – When new Iona coach Kevin Willard was recruiting Scott Machado, he told him – all but warned him – that he was going to be thrown right into the fire, asked to sink or swim as a freshman point guard playing major minutes and running an inexperienced team.

All the Queens Village native has done is swim to the MAAC Rookie of the Year award yesterday, after carrying a young team on his back. And at 9:30 tonight, the seventh-seeded Gaels (12-18, 7-11) get to show how much they’ve grown when they tip off the MAAC tourney versus Marist.

“Coach has a lot of expectations for me,” said Machado, who in high school led St. Benedict’s (N.J.) to a 24-1 record and No. 2 national ranking.

“We just had a tough season, maybe unlucky bounces here and there,” he said. “But I think we’ve been playing good ball, sometimes not being able to score. But we’ll be OK. We plan to [go deep] in the MAAC tournament.”

If they do – and they’re coming in mired in a four-game losing streak, as their transition offense has been slowed to a crawl – they’ll have to raise the level of their game to match their freshman leader.

“There’s a lot of good young players in the league, but I don’t think anyone was asked to carry a team the way he was, from the start,” Willard said.

Machado was third in the league in assists (4.9) and fifth in assist-to-turnover ratio. But as a team, the Gaels’ 16.2 turnovers per conference game were a league high, and an Achilles’ heel Willard has tried to fix, even demanding push-ups in practice after turnovers are committed.

“Turnover-itis, we caught it bad,” Willard said of his Gaels, who’ve lost eight of 10 and struggled to score in their halfcourt offense. “But we’re still playing hard, still playing good defense, so if we can cut down on our turnovers, I think we’ll have a good chance.”